Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Climate Change can spin the Tectonic Plates

Monsoons spinning the Earth's plates: study

For the first time confirmed that long-term climate change has the potential to spin the Earth’s tectonic plates.

Dr Giampiero Iaffaldano from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences and colleagues in France and Germany have established a link between the motion of the Indian plate over the past 10 million years and a specific climate change event over the same period: the intensification of the Indian monsoon.

Dr Iaffaldano said that the monsoon, which increased rainfall in northeast Indian by four metres annually, sped up motion in the Indian plate by almost one centimetre per year.